Original article
Does Online Harassment Constitute Bullying? An Exploration of Online Harassment by Known Peers and Online-Only Contacts

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2007.08.019Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To shed light on the nature of online harassment and the extent to which it may be bullying by examining differences in the characteristics of harassed youth, online harassment incidents, and distressing online harassment based on the identity of online harassers (known peer vs. online-only contact).

Methods

A telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 1500 youth Internet users, ages 10 to 17, conducted between March and June 2005.

Results

Nine percent (n = 129) of youth were harassed online in the past year, 43% (n = 56) by known peers and 57% (n = 73) by people they met online and did not know in person (online-only contacts). Most online harassment incidents did not appear to meet the standard definition of bullying used in school-based research and requiring aggression, repetition, and power imbalance. Only 25% of incidents by known peers and 21% by online-only contacts involved both repeated incidents and either distress to targets or adult intervention.

Conclusions

In many cases, the concept of “bullying” or “cyber-bullying” may be inappropriate for online interpersonal offenses. We suggest using “online harassment,” with disclaimers that it does not constitute bullying unless it is part of or related to offline bullying. This would include incidents perpetrated by peers that occur entirely online, but arise from school-related events or relationships and have school-related consequences for targets. The Internet provides opportunities for the extension of conventional school bullying to new venues. Those who study conventional school bullying should include online forms of the behavior in research, prevention, and intervention paradigms.

Section snippets

Prevalence and characteristics of online harassment

Researchers have not devised standard definitions of online harassment, and the few surveys that exist have used different definitions and time frames, finding widely varying rates. For example, a study published in 2006 conducted with an online convenience sample found that 29% of youth had ever been bullied online, with online bullying defined to include “bothering someone online, teasing in a mean way, calling someone hurtful names, intentionally leaving persons out of things, threatening

Does online harassment constitute bullying?

Much bullying occurs in school [5], [9], but how often online harassment arises from incidents at school is unknown. As noted, much online harassment is perpetrated by online contacts that youth do not know in person. Online harassment precludes physical acts of violence, and it may be less threatening because harassers cannot use physical attributes such as size and tone of voice to intimidate. On the other hand, verbal aggression in the form of threats, rumors, and gossip is a form of

Methods

We used telephone interviews conducted between March and June 2005 to gather information from a national sample of youth Internet users. The research was approved by the University of New Hampshire Institutional Review Board.

Results

Nine percent (n = 129) of the 1499 youth respondents had been harassed online in the past year. Of these, 43% (n = 56) were harassed by known peers and 57% (n = 73) by online-only contacts.

Does online harassment constitute bullying?

Certain individual variables suggest that online harassment by known peers may constitute bullying more often than harassment by online-only contacts, defining bullying as requiring aggression, repetition, and power imbalance. More than half of known peer harassers sent or posted messages for others to see, suggesting gossip and rumor spreading and incidents that would be difficult for targets to terminate. Also, close to half of known peer harassers were female. Because girls who bully tend to

Acknowledgments

All of the funds for this research were derived from federal sources, totaling $348,767, through Grant No. 2005-MC-CX-K024 from the U.S. Department of Justice, OJJDP, and Grant No. HSCEOP-05-P-00346 from the U.S. Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security. Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice or Department of Homeland Security. Program support was provided by

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